Abstract:

Collision avoidance protocol is important in improving autonomous vehicles’ safety. Most of collision avoidance protocols provide vehicles outside the intersection with collision avoidance mechanism. However, the vehicles at the intersection are easy to be collided because of the high flow and multiple directions, but most of the existing collisions avoidance plans do not provide appropriate strategies for those vehicles at the intersection. As the popular protocol, AIM does not support collision avoidance at the intersection. Two collision avoidance protocols at the intersection are proposed: (1) when the space is small, the improved AIM gives the brake based avoidance plans according to three conditions, i.e., in the same/opposite/vertical directions; (2) when the space is large, besides providing the brake based avoidance plans, the improved AIM can support avoidance by turning the vehicles. The effectiveness of the improvements is demonstrated by an example.    

Key words: self-driving cars;autonomous intersection management;collision avoidance plan